Some landed on the doormat from exotic climes, others from picturesque spots just along the road, delivering scenes of seaside fun and mountain views, sunny days and warm messages of ‘wish you were here’.

For generations of holidaymakers who made their way to the coast or the hills for a well-earned break, choosing, writing and then sending a postcard was all part of getting away from it all.

While for those who received them – sometimes long after the sender’s suntan had faded – the photograph on the front may well have sparked a pang of envy and the thought that they wished they were there too.

In the age of Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp, few holidaymakers heading off in coming weeks would dream of spending precious time browsing cards, trekking to a foreign post office and hoping the stamp might cover the UK postage.

But for those missing a brief despatch from a far-flung beach describing the quality of the food and the heat of the sun, a new exhibition at Dundee’s V&A is set to offer a nostalgic trip to a time when sending greetings from far afield and well wishes involved far more effort than simply tapping our phones.

Sincerely, Valentines – From Postcards to Greetings Cards, explores the beauty, art and sentiment behind cards which were a familiar part of life for generations, and the pioneering Dundee business that churned out hundreds of millions of them.

At its peak family firm Valentines was one of the city’s largest employers with an army of photographers, illustrators, writers, artists, printers and often entire families involved in the production picture postcards and greeting cards destined to bring happy moments to recipients around the globe.

The free exhibition, which opens on Saturday, June 2, will explore how the firm evolved from its 1825 roots to a printing giant behind a mind-boggling number of postcards, greetings cards and calendars.

According to Lucy McEachan of curatorial practice Panel, who worked on the exhibition with colleague Catriona Duffy, Valentines capitalised on rapid developments that spanned photography, printing and tourism in the early 20th century.

The result was a fascinating body of work and a vibrant industry – there was a time when few homes around the land would not have had something bearing the ‘Valentines’ logo.

Masses of photographs taken of seasides, tourist towns and even seemingly ordinary, day to day street scenes which made up souvenir photograph books for visitors to take home and postcards to send, captured Britain at unique moments in time.

“They pioneered the mass production of the postcard at a time when the Post Office allowed people to not just write a message but to have an address on the back side of a card,” Lucy says.

“They took advantage of technological developments, the development of mass tourism that came about as people had more leisure time and increased opportunities to travel by rail on ‘doon the water’ by boat.

“Photographers were commissioned to work around the country, photographing the landscape and romanticising it – they documented pretty much every town across the UK.

“Looking back now you can chart the development of our towns and cities from the postcards and you can see that some have changed radically.”

The exhibition features original photographs that have never been exhibited before, alongside printing plates, historic postcards, promotional company magazines, booklets and greetings cards from the James Valentine Photographic Collection, a huge archive held at University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums.

It also includes artwork and greetings cards loaned from former Valentines staff, and excerpts from interviews with former Valentines’ employees which explore the crucial role women played in the everyday life of the factory, and what it was like to work for the firm.

Accompanying it is a new film by Rob Kennedy which focuses on their experiences and highlights the important contribution Valentines made to Dundee’s social, cultural and industrial heritage, and a series of oversized postcards created by designer Maeve Redmond.

The firm’s roots date to 1825, when John Valentine set up a business as an engraver of woodblocks for linen printing in Overgate, Dundee.

When his son, James, a portrait painter, joined the business, he used his skills as an engraver and copperplate printer to specialise in letterpress printing, stationery, and a series of illustrated envelopes, which become forerunners of the picture postcard.

The growth of photography and a connection with Aberdeen-based George Washington Wilson and Co – whose photographs were much admired by Queen Victoria – saw the business become the largest photographic glasshouse in Britain, with a photography studio producing albums of Scottish landscapes and topographical prints which allowed Victorians to show off scenes from their travels to their acquaintances back home.

Not all picture postcards were attractive holiday vistas, however. James’ son William was a pioneer in underwater photography, which led to Valentines becoming official photographer of the remains of the Tay Bridge following its 1879 collapse. The pictures are subsequently sold across the country, and also used in picture postcards.

The growth of railways and the motor car in the late 19th and early 20th century and an increasingly modern postal service saw demand for the postcard surge.

Cheaper and faster than the traditional letter, mail could be delivered in hours rather than days and weeks, while technology allowed images to be printed on the front, and a message along with address on the back, adds Lucy.

It wasn’t just romantic landscapes and seaside scenes that featured on postcards. Illustrations by artists like Mabel Lucie Attwell, known for her cute, nostalgic images of children, were also popular, while others depicting more far-flung scenes have become documents of the British Empire with their promotion of colonialist exoticism, nationalism and political propaganda.

By the First World War, the firm was a worldwide name with branch offices in Jamaica, Madeira, Norway, Tangier, Canada and New York producing souvenir books and postcards, and with more than 1,000 employees.

The firm was publishing around 25 million postcards annually by the mid-1960s, but cheap foreign travel and the ease of making a phone call home to share news of how good the hotel is, the food and the weather meant their days were numbered.

The firm focused on the more lucrative business of selling greeting cards and the negatives, prints and postcards archive moved to the University of St Andrews Library.

Under American-based owners Hallmark Cards, the Dundee workforce churned out up to 250,000 greetings cards a day but production eventually shifted elsewhere, and the Tayside business closed in 1994.

The art of writing a postcard – cramming a succinct message home in a tiny space – and the joy of receiving one, is now largely of the past.

“Postcards were the Instagram of their day,” adds Lucy. “They were a physical object that told so many different stories about our country, landscape, environment and there’s a social story when you read the messages.”

Sincerely, Valentines - From Postcards to Greetings Cards is at V&A Dundee’s Michelin Design Gallery from 2 July 2022 until 8 Jan 2023.